If you loved how Caspar, Johnny, Gwinny, Douglas, and Malcolm keep stumbling into mayhem once those enchanted chemistry sets start causing unexpected effects—like sudden flights and out-of-control transformations—then you’ll relish the coin in Half Magic that grants wishes only halfway. Watching four siblings bicker, make spectacularly wrong wishes, and learn to cooperate feels just like when the step-siblings in The Ogre Downstairs realize they’ll have to work together to clean up magical messes and, in the process, start to understand one another.

The sparkling, dry humor that runs through the kids’ escalating experiments with the Ogre’s mysterious chemistry sets—pranks gone wrong, wildly literal effects, desperate attempts to hide the evidence—finds a perfect echo here. In The Phoenix and the Carpet, a magical carpet and a talkative phoenix whisk a set of siblings into wish-fueled scrapes that are every bit as funny and fraught as Caspar and Johnny trying to keep Douglas and Malcolm from discovering exactly what went boom in the kitchen this time.

One of the best parts of The Ogre Downstairs is how the kids’ magical disasters gradually peel back the ‘ogre’ mask on Jack and thaw the feud between the two sets of siblings. Freaky Friday uses a single, brilliant enchantment—a mother–daughter body-swap—to deliver that same emotional punch. If watching Caspar and the others gain empathy as the magic keeps complicating their lives hit home, you’ll enjoy seeing Annabel walk a mile in her mum’s shoes and come out with a new kind of understanding.

If the way the bickering step-siblings in The Ogre Downstairs slowly knit into a real family—thanks to those unruly potions and shared cover-ups—made you smile, this has the same warmth. A ragtag rescue party (from a gentle ogre to a witch and a wizard) must retrieve a stolen prince from our world, squabbling and bonding as they go. It carries that cozy shift from ‘we’re stuck together’ to ‘we choose each other’ you felt when Caspar, Johnny, Gwinny, Douglas, and Malcolm finally start pulling as a team.

Beyond the laughs, The Ogre Downstairs shines because the magic catalyzes real change—resentments soften, the ‘Ogre’ becomes human, and the kids grow up a notch. Haroun and the Sea of Stories channels that arc through a fantastical journey to restore his father’s storytelling. Like the kids cleaning up the fallout from those volatile chemicals and learning to listen, Haroun’s quest blends whimsy with steady, heartfelt growth—and ends with a renewed family connection.